


Welcome to the Rest of Your Life

by athousandwinds



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-26
Updated: 2010-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose has a <i>fantastic</i> life. [AU where Rose and Mickey stayed in the altverse.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to the Rest of Your Life

Once Rose had stopped crying (they'd stayed another two nights in Norway and she'd made a mess of her pillow. Mum'd come up to her room every hour or so, just to check on her), she'd taken a deep breath and looked around. And, OK, she'd been hiccupping a bit, but she'd tried. Bad Wolf Bay was sort of sparkly at night, with the moonshine gleaming off the wet pebbles and the tide washing up the beach. Sometimes, always, the pain was worth it to see something like that.

She'd only had to cross the universe to find it. She laughed suddenly, the sound clear and delighted in the midnight silence.

She _had_ crossed the universe.

_Remember me, Rose Tyler._

There was only one thing she had left to do.

_Have a fantastic life._

\---

 

As it turned out, she didn't even need those A-levels. ("How many Zs do you want, babe?" Mickey asked, seating himself at his office computer. "They're called Zertifikats," said his boss, Henry, in the wearied tones of someone who didn't understand the younger generation and deeply resented having to try.) She took Torchwood's job offer and spent the first two months confusing the research assistants by re-labelling all the artefacts. ("No, right, look. It's not Raxacoricofallapatorian at all, it's from Klom. – No, look, ask Mickey if you don't believe me. Go on. The thing is, it's like – it's like asking Gareth what part of England he's from. Yeah.")

"Saved the world a lot." It was a hell of a thing to put on a CV. (They didn't have _Buffy_ here, another little cognitive dissonance that caught up with her in the bad moments. She'd never watched it, but Mickey had, religiously.) Luckily, it seemed to be the sort of thing Torchwood liked in a woman. They accepted "alternate universe" without the blink of an eye (of course they did, bastards, bastards, _bastards_) and even started courting Mum. Mum eyed them with suspicion whenever they came round and took to rubbing her belly protectively. Once, this world's Yvonne Hartman (a man, dark-haired, called Euan, but: "Slimy," Mum said, "up to no good, I'll bet.") made a comment about her pregnancy and Mum let him have it.

"I'll not let you lay a finger on my baby, is that clear?" she snarled. She glanced at Rose. "_Or_ her! Or any of my family, and if you do I'll make you wish you'd never been born. D'you hear me?"

Euan had retreated into the safety of the couch, hiding behind his nice cup of tea, two sugars. "I assure you, Mrs Tyler, Torchwood has had absolutely no thoughts in – in that direction."

"_Oh_, yeah." Mum rose from the sofa like a majestic, vengeful eagle. "Well, you'd better not've had."

Apart from Euan's occasional, subtle prodding to spill her heart – or, more usefully, her brain – to Geoff the counsellor (who was actually an undercover research scientist. Euan apparently still thought they didn't know), life at Torchwood was all right. She learnt basic camouflage ("What d'you mean, the United Socialist States of America?" "...You really are blonde, aren't you?" "What?") and ate up the work, spending her free time down the pub with Mickey and Jake. One night when Mickey was working late, she and Jake got completely pissed and stumbled down the lane at one in the morning, singing some rugby chant (because no one played football, not professionally). The kerb suddenly rushed up to meet them and they sat down with a thump.

"Oi, Jake..." she muttered, her head muzzled with bad vodka.

"Yeah?"

"Have you ever had someone? Y'know, someone who was your best mate..."

"Yeah." If she'd been paying enough attention, she'd've noticed that Jake sounded almost sober.

"And then they're not. There. Poof!" She tried to click her fingers, but her hand was tired and wouldn't do as it was told.

"Yeah." Jake was unexpectedly heavy, leaning on her like that. She grunted and he shifted off, sighing.

"I miss him," Rose said, and hiccupped.

"Yeah." Jake sounded guilty, like he'd got a wonderful present for Christmas that he wasn't sure he'd wanted.

"I thought I couldn't live without him, y'know." Rose stared at the chewing gum ground grey into the tarmac. It was endlessly fascinating. "And then – "

"Yeah," said Jake.

"And then I did." Rose snorted, but it wasn't really funny. The glare of headlights shone over their faces and she blinked. A banged-up old Renault choked to a stop in the space by them. Mickey got out.

"I _knew_ you'd be smashed," he said, like oh-no-not-again-why-do-I-even-bother. But he was smirking. "Come on, mate."

Rose woke the next morning with a pounding headache, something dead in her mouth and utterly convinced that Jake liked fit black guys with names beginning with – well, ending in "-ickey".

\---

 

The first action Rose saw as TWA Rose Tyler (Dad insisted on calling her "Twarose" for weeks after she got her ID card until Mum scolded him and slapped him on the shoulder) wasn't quite action, and she was proud of that. The crisis came on the seventeenth of June, nine months after – well, after.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon when Emma, the chief operator of the beeping machine that monitored the stratosphere, reported an anomaly. Three minutes later she reported another anomaly. Ten minutes after that, her immortal words were recorded as:

"God, I think they're breeding."

\---

 

Rose was going through the Torchwood database, trying to cross-reference the design of the ship with anything Torchwood knew about. It wasn't going well. She was identifying number 260 of 789 and attempting, even less successfully, not to yawn, when what sounded like yet another alarm screeched through the main chamber.

"We've got a phone call from the President!" Lin shouted across the hubbub. "She wants to know what we've got!"

"It's a _brilliant_ cloaking device," Mickey offered, his voice full of envious admiration, "Can we – " at the same time as Euan said,

"More than enough to exterminate them twice over."

They glared at each other. Rose watched them with detached anger rising in her stomach. Euan broke the silence first, tapping the communications pipe. "Rob says they've taken damage. Some of those ships are shaking around pretty badly and it doesn't look normal. _Three_ times over, if it's as bad as it looks. Tell the President we'll go to stations."

Lin clutched the phone in one hand, her knuckles paling. She was a woman in her late thirties with flyaway brown hair and a permanently worried expression on her face that had deepened into a sort of determined dread of Euan. "She says not, sir. She says she doesn't want to prejudice the negotiations."

Euan nodded soothingly. "Tell her that Torchwood fully understands her predicament." He added _sotto voce_ down the pipe, "Release the codes."

"You can't do that!"

Rose almost choked on furious bile as Euan turned to look at her, but she stood up anyway. She'd done this a hundred times, a hundred thousand times and she couldn't fail on the hundred and first, because it was always the most important. She swallowed and looked back. Euan raised an eyebrow.

"They've got no weapons," came Rob's voice, hollow and rattling in the tube.

"What kind of alien invader comes without weapons?" Jake asked, sounding almost disappointed.

"Exactly," Mickey agreed pointedly, still staring hard at Evan.

"I'm sorry," Euan said in his pleasantest manner. "Would you two like to run this little operation?"

"Yeah, go on." Mickey folded his arms and lifted his chin defiantly. He'd done the same ever since he was little and not allowed to play.

Euan's indulgence vanished immediately. There was something infinitely sharp and spiteful in his tone as he spoke, like the spike of pain in your head when you had a migraine. "I'd remind you who the head of this institution is, but it seems unnecessary."

Mickey faltered nearly imperceptibly, glancing at Jake. Rose saw it and all at once an idea about family came together in her mind. "Except you're not, are you?"

Euan hadn't wasted any time on her after Jake had started questioning him, but now he gazed at her with a seeming of elegant inquiry. "Excuse me?"

Well, it was true. "Pete Tyler is." And it was hers to say, no one else could have got away with it. "Even he does what the President says."

Lin spoke up nervously. Rose could sympathise. "We are a government organisation."

"Mutiny in a crisis. What a classic trope." Euan smiled, his charm rolling back. He spread out his arms. "Well, Agent Tyler, take charge. Since it's a family business."

Rose cringed, momentarily humiliated, and stepped gingerly towards the phone Lin still held.

"Madam President? Are you there?"

\---

 

President Harriet Jones was surprised but not unwilling to allow a Torchwood agent to ascend with her party. Rose sat beside her on the airship, shifting uncomfortably. The woman was the same – no doubt about that, she even wore the same brooch – but her features were sterner and her forehead more lined than Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North. She sat rigidly in her seat, her fingers drumming against the arm.

"You're very young for a Torchwood agent," she remarked, her cool hazel eyes guarded but not unkind. "Especially such a high-profile one."

Rose jumped at the sudden comment and tried not to squirm. "I've – got a lot of – " The word had briefly escaped her. It appeared and she seized on it gratefully. "Experience! Yeah." It was worse than trying to make small talk with a Dalek. At least then it wouldn't be your fault if the conversation was cut short.

"You're Peter Tyler's step-daughter, of course." It didn't have the malice of Euan's jib and it was said casually but Rose could nearly see the conclusion reached behind Harriet Jones's frown. She blushed, even though it wasn't true at all, at all. "And how are you getting on at Torchwood?"

This at least didn't seem to have an edge and Rose relaxed into the chat. As they approached the fleet – was it a fleet if there were only ten ships? – she clipped her headset on. People were still paranoid about these, so Euan had insisted on vetting it himself.

He was speaking now, actually. "Tyler?"

"I can hear you." Unfortunately.

"Excellent."

The doors opened and they stepped out into the cargo bay of the leading ship. The floor and walls were made of some shiny substance that gave slightly under Rose's feet. The science department would be ecstatic if they ever got their hands on a sample.

She looked up.

Thousands of eyes stared down at her, quite unnerving in their wide, silent desperation. She stepped forward instinctively; the rest of the party took a step back. It wasn't quite as bad as it sounded. For a start, they all had about eighteen eyes each. They lined the walkways above, throngs of strange people looking like bad acid trips, and the only noise in the bay was their breathing.

Harriet Jones was the first to recover. There was one seated away from the rest, out in front and vulnerable to attack. Rose thought of Euan and tapped her headset.

"Still here, Tyler."

"All right, all right."

Harriet Jones had moved forward to address the one in front, discreetly trailed by her bodyguard. "Harriet Jones, President of Great Britain." Rose half-expected her to pull out her ID. "What have you come here for?"

"Are you authorised to speak for your planet?" was the only answer. Harriet Jones motioned forward an anxious-looking man armed with a handheld translator.

"Ah – speech? – power – power to speak?"

"He wants to know if you can speak for Earth, not just – I mean – " Rose stopped. Harriet Jones was looking at her curiously. "Torchwood," she said before her brain caught up with her mouth. She went with it. "Torchwood basic training. Language skills."

"I see, Agent." The curiosity in her expression had hardly abated. "Mr Ketterick?"

Euan whispered in her ear, "I want a report on that."

"Ask Mickey," she muttered. Mickey was more experienced at lying his backside off. Mr Ketterick had confirmed her translation and Harriet Jones turned to her again.

"Tell them that I am authorised to speak for an extremely large part of Earth."

"Yeah, she is. Pretty much," Rose said and hoped devoutly that the Doctor was awake and well.

"We are survivors of a war," their leader began. "We – "

"Find out who they are!" Euan hissed. Harriet Jones, after a hasty exchange with her translator, turned round and said,

"War...?"

"I want to track them back to wherever they came from."

"Why, so you can destroy them?"

"'Destroy'?" the leader asked sharply. His translator was far more efficient than Harriet's. "_Destroy_?"

"War?" Harriet demanded.

"All of you, _shut up_!"

There was a terrible, horrified silence. Even the aliens had stopped breathing for a split second. Rose opened her eyes and slowly uncurled her hands. There were small half-moon marks on her palms from her nails. "Right, then," she said. "Madam President, they're refugees. From a war. They're _nothing_ to do with Cybermen," she added, because even if Harriet Jones was more sensible, other people not a million miles away might not be. As if it had reminded her, she reached up and slipped her headset off.

"My boss. That was, I mean. My boss." The leader was looking sceptical and the stirring of discontent among the aliens was building. "He's such a pain." She threw the headset on the ground and trod on it, crunching a hundred and fifty euros-worth of delicate equipment underfoot. It'd never been much use.

The leader smiled, or at least gave the appearance of a smile. It was hard to tell on a face with eighteen eyes, nine nostrils and three mouths. It was already overcrowded. It said,

"We request asylum."

"OK." This was going much better than last time. Either she was getting the hang of this negotiating thing or Euan would crucify her once they landed. Maybe both. "Um. Is someone looking for you, or something?"

"As far as we know – as far as _I_ know – " The leader paused. "No," it said. "No." Even through the bizarre features and the shape of its body, Rose thought, you could see it – he – she – it was tired. She looked over at Harriet Jones.

"They're requesting asylum," she said. "In my official capacity as Torchwood representative, I highly advise you give it to them." Nine months and she'd already got the lingo. It was easier than Shadow Conventions and ratifications and ramifications, which was good, because she couldn't swordfight.

"Can they give us any guarantees?"

Rose shoved her fingers into her hair. It was in a loose bun and was already coming apart. "I don't know. It's been a long day, Madam President. Why don't we all sleep on it?"

"And let them stay overhead?" Harriet's voice held only calm interest. "They can be seen by the naked eye, Agent Tyler." Rose blinked at her. "Are you volunteering to take responsibility?"

"Yeah, OK," Rose said without thinking about it. She went on recklessly, "I mean, we could put some of them up at our house. And the Institute's pretty big, it's got to have beds somewhere. Or we could get – um."

"Agent Tyler, you weary me," Harriet Jones told her, but those cool brown eyes had some light in them. "I will not consent to Torchwood taking over this situation." She paused, the ghost of a smile on her lips and the ghost of an idealistic MP looking over her shoulder. "More than they have already."

"Sorry," Rose said automatically, but she wasn't and she knew it and Harriet Jones knew she knew it. She turned back to the aliens and explained what was going to happen. A sigh seemed to ripple around the bay and if she wasn't much mistaken, their leader relaxed.

They settled the Tepaket – as they appeared to be named – in temporary housing ("The House of Lords?" "Well, it's not like anyone's using it.") under the care of the British branch of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. The officer she spoke to about it looked at her with worrying thoughtfulness and treated her with much more respect than she got at Torchwood. It was intoxicating, like vodka you couldn't get at the local pub.

Then she went back to the Institute.

"Oh, God," she told Lin, collapsing into her swivel chair. "I'm knackered."

"Put your feet up, love," Lin said sympathetically. "Gareth'll make us a pot of tea."

"He bloody won't."

The argument continued over her head as Rose rested her brow on the solid wood of the desk. She was exhausted and she hadn't run for her life _once_ today. Getting out of practice...

And how would the Doctor have handled this? The sudden wisp of thought assailed her and she sat up, rubbing her eyes. She wasn't sure...

But that wasn't the point at all, was it. She'd handled it. She. Rose. Rose Tyler. Saved the world, again. Only this time, she'd done it alone.

"You humans," the Doctor had said once. "It's what I like most about you lot, you know. You all save someone's world every day, in whatever way. And you don't even notice."

For a moment, she hurt all over with missing him. Then she swallowed and said out loud,

"Mickey? What's tomorrow's headlines?"


End file.
